Thank You Letter: Why To Send A Thank You Note After The Interview

Sending a thank you letter or thank you email to a hiring manager is a great way to follow up after an interview to reiterate your interest in a job.

It’s also a great way to help keep you top of mind in the eyes of the hiring manager. This can be especially important if the hiring manager is interviewing numerous people.

Trust me, after interviewing several people, even hiring managers with great memories start getting candidates mixed up with one another so anything you can do to keep yourself top of mind can be a big benefit to you.

Before sending a thank you letter or thank you email, keep a few things in mind:

1. Keep the note brief. A quick note thanking the hiring manager for their time while reiterating your desire for the job should suffice. Chances are that you’ll be given a business card of the person you met with and if that’s the case, sending a thank you email should be fine. Email is a perfectly acceptable form of communication for this thank you note. If you met with more than one person, I’d suggest emailing each person separately, not as a group.

2. Make absolute sure there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Nothing can hurt your chances for a job and defeat the goodwill generated by sending a thank you note than when you send a note that has typos or other errors. Make sure you spell everyone’s names correctly, too!

3. Make sure you send the thank you letter or thank you email quickly. Don’t wait for a week to send the thank you note. This is especially true if you decide to send a thank you letter and put it in the mail since it may not get received for several days. Try to send it the same day you attend the interview even if you’re sending a thank you email which obviously gets delivered a lot quicker. You don’t necessarily have to send a thank you note after every interview with the same company. Sending a thank you note after the first interview should be fine.

Even if you’ve been rejected by an employer for a job and they’ve decided to hire someone else, you might consider sending a short thank you letter anyways.

In this case, you might simply thank them for their consideration and to ask that they keep you in mind for future positions.

I’ve seen instances where a candidate who wasn’t chosen for a job ends up getting hired months later because the person that was hired didn’t work out. In this case, the candidate left a good impression with the hiring manager and got a second chance. Sending a brief thank you note can certainly help to leave a good impression with the hiring manager.

Carl Mueller is an Internet entrepreneur and professional recruiter who wants to help you find your dream career.

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